Keyes' 1992 Senate campaign was hurt badly when the press revealed
he was paying himself a huge amount out of campaign funds. This
is technically legal but rare and sleazy. We don't know of any other candidates for
president who have ever paid themselves out of campaign funds from any campaign they've been in.

His staff urged him
to stop but he refused. Keyes now says, "I don't think it
will be necessary this time 'round."

More generally, Keyes knows that his doomed presidential campaigns can raise his profile and help his
career as a public speaker and radio personality. Jesse Jackson and Pat Buchanan have pursued this strategy for years.
According to Time Magazine, Keyes' 1996 campaign doubled his speaking fee from $7,500 to $15,000 per speech.

Keyes has always been a professional talker - first as an academic,
then a diplomat, and now as a candidate and talk show host.

Even as a diplomat, his biggest jobs were opposing sanctions on
South Africa as one of many Assistant Secretaries of State under Reagan - some feel his career was based on being Reagan's
token black willing to defend the apartheid regime - and as Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, a
post requiring no actual diplomacy, just lots of speeches. It
seems plenty hard for governors to adjust to running the federal
government, so the odds that Keyes could wing it are very low.
Basically, he's the Republican Jesse Jackson.

Reporter Andy Lamy asked several staffers from his 1992 campaign
if they supported his run for president. Susan Saum-Wicklein,
Keyes's 1992 campaign manager, said "He's doing what?"
"Absolutely not," said Ed Goetz, Keyes's 1992 pollster.
"There are much, much better candidates." Sylvia Pearson,
of Keyes 1992 direct mail firm, said it is "very safe to
say" that she won't be a supporter. Maryland Republican Party
Chair Joyce Lyons Terhes said "I don't see this campaign
as a Maryland-based campaign."

Keyes was happy to take $100,000/year as salary from his 1992 Senate campaign, but when it
came time to pay that same campaign's debts, he said: "I personally do not owe the debt that was owed
by the campaign." That was about $45,000, which was unpaid from 1992 through the end
of 1996, according to the FEC. Of course, if he hadn't paid himself so much money, he would have had plenty to pay off that debt.

Keyes told a reporter that the money will be paid off -- by the
campaign, not by him of course -- but several creditors said Keyes
hadn't communicated with them years later. In 1995-1996, for example, his 1992 Senate campaign
received $34,821 and spent over $15,000, but he couldn't manage to pay off any of that debt.

Finally, some time during 1997-1998, Keyes paid off most of this money. The FEC reports show that
he spent $49,544 during that time, and reimbursed $41,094 worth of loans, but somehow he managed to end up still
owing more than $34,000 for his 1992 Senate race at the end of the reporting period. Presumably he took on new loans to pay the old ones
(though the FEC data doesn't give enough detail to be sure.)

Incidentally, Keyes still owes over $200,000 on his 1996 presidential campaign as well. At the end of 1996,
he owed $350,000; since then, he has raised over $1,000,000 for a campaign that is over, but spent even more
($1,099,972) and only reduced his debt by $150,000.

In 1995, his campaign wrote over $20,000 in bad checks, which his spokesman blamed on a former campaign aide.